photo by: Contributed

From left to right, Jenny Lichte, Lori Lee and Meredith Marshall — Foster Village Lawrence's founders — are pictured.

As the familiar saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. The folks behind one Lawrence nonprofit have taken that message to heart in their efforts to support foster children and their caregivers.

Foster Village Lawrence is an affiliate chapter of a nonprofit that first launched in Austin, Texas, back in 2016. Whether in Lawrence or elsewhere, Foster Village’s goals are to equip foster caregivers with support, connect foster families to one another and to advocate for changes to the foster care system.

The Lawrence chapter — which actually serves foster families throughout northeastern Kansas — began operating as an independent nonprofit organization in August of 2022 and is now one of 10 Foster Village chapters throughout the country. In the 10 months or so since then, Foster Village Lawrence has served more than 120 children here in northeast Kansas.

The Lawrence chapter was founded by three friends — Lori Lee, Meredith Marshall and Jenny Lichte — who had been looking for their own way to support foster families. Figuring out where to start was overwhelming at first, but Lee eventually suggested they start a Foster Village affiliate chapter after having followed the Austin organization for a few years.

“I’m not a ‘reinvent the wheel’ type of person,” Lee, Foster Village Lawrence’s president, told the Journal-World. “If you give me something that has worked, I’m just going to take what has worked. So that was real appealing. We’re all busy moms; we all work outside of the home as well.”

Of the three founders, Lee is the only one who’s been a foster parent herself; she fostered for five years but said she only interacted with one other family that was actively fostering in Lawrence during that time. Lichte, for her part, has seen how the system works secondhand through watching her family members serve as caregivers.

The trio’s decision stemmed from those individual experiences, and from a pretty simple idea — that though it might not be possible for everyone to foster even if they want to, they can still act on a desire to help out.

“We primarily want to encourage and connect and support families who are interacting with a child in the foster care system,” Lichte, the nonprofit’s vice president, said. “… As friends of people who foster, we know that it’s a very, very hard job and can be very overwhelming. Not all of us are in a place to directly foster, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for us to help.”

Lee said operating as an affiliate program means Foster Village Lawrence has access to the overarching organization’s graphics and other branding materials while still being able to tailor the local program to the greatest needs in the area. For one example of that symbiotic relationship, the Lawrence affiliate will soon launch a fundraiser that stems from the national organization — a lemonade stand campaign. Folks who sign up for a $20 lemonade stand kit will receive lemonade supplies and information sheets that will help them talk about the needs in the foster care system and can then host their own lemonade stand anytime during the month of July. At the end of the month, the cumulative proceeds go to Foster Village Lawrence.

Having that framework ready to roll out means local volunteers can just focus on doing the work. The kickoff for the local campaign is set for Saturday, July 1, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Centennial Park, 600 Rockledge Road. Folks who are interested in operating their own lemonade stand next month can sign up on Foster Village Lawrence’s website.

photo by: Contributed

Charlotte Lee and Clementine Lichte, children of two of Foster Village Lawrence’s co-founders, host the nonprofit’s first-ever lemonade stand on July 3, 2022.

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In a sense, the volunteers guiding Foster Village Lawrence told the Journal-World they are carving out a role as the “middleman” between foster families and the agencies best equipped to lend them a hand.

“We want to be a village of support for the people who are (interacting) with the child, but also we want to be a hub so anybody who has anything to do with foster care — or wants to have anything to do with it — can just ask us and we can point them in the right direction,” Lichte said.

That doesn’t mean replicating services offered at other organizations like DCCCA, which is licensed to recruit and train foster parents, or Douglas County Court Appointed Special Advocates, which trains and recruits volunteers who advocate for children under the protection of the county’s court system.

Instead, Lichte said Foster Village Lawrence wants to act as a bridge to those existing services. That could mean connecting the family of a foster child who loves horses to Joy Meadows, a foster care community in Linwood that offers equine therapy.

Lichte said another goal is to eliminate the feeling of isolation that often comes along with being a foster caregiver. Connecting families with others who understand what they’re going through is one action that other agencies may not have the bandwidth to focus on.

There are a number of ways Foster Village Lawrence goes about developing those connections between families, but one of its main strategies is by hosting regular networking events. That includes support groups for foster moms and dads to meet and spend some time together, caregiver night out events that allow for some “respite care” and organized play dates that bring foster families together without the need for the back-and-forth affair of scheduling.

photo by: Contributed

Children play at one of Foster Village Lawrence’s monthly caregivers’ night out events. Crafts, games, dinner, snacks and attentive caregivers give foster families a three-hour break each month in partnership with local community organizations.

Foster Village Lawrence also puts together “welcome packs” for new foster families — care packages that include the basic necessities that a family otherwise might not already have on hand. The packs can include everything from a few days’ worth of clothing and diapers to blankets, water bottles and car seats.

Those are an important tool, Lee said, because children coming into foster care often bring nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. On top of that, she said many families who get licensed to foster may learn they’ve been selected for a placement with only a little notice — or even to care for a child who’s younger than they were prepared to care for in the first place.

“If they’re willing to say yes, then the least we can do is help them with their stuff,” Lichte said.

The welcome packs also act as an entry point for the nonprofit to interface with new families and keep contact, or to reconnect with families who are fostering again after a previous placement ended — and sometimes even caring for multiple children at once.

“This is what I’ve seen in doing this — that these families take in so many children,” April Lamb, Foster Village Lawrence’s events coordinator, said. “They have so much love for all of these children, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to help.”

The nonprofit offers the same supports to kinship caregivers — relatives like grandparents, uncles or siblings who care for children when their birth parents are unable to. This type of foster care doesn’t require a license, meaning those caregivers may have even less support than folks who are trained and licensed to foster. It’s the best placement for a child, Lee said, making it even more crucial that those folks have the support necessary to be a comfortable home for their young relatives.

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Even though Foster Village Lawrence hasn’t been around for long, Lee said leaders with the nonprofit already have some ideas for how they’re hoping it’ll grow. For one, she said they’re always looking for more folks interested in volunteering — whether during the upcoming lemonade stand fundraiser or to help with welcome pack deliveries and the once-per-month caregiver night out events — and to build more connections between foster families and other area organizations.

But the long-term goal is to find a place of their own — an office space with a “home-like” environment that can serve as a meeting place for foster families and their case workers, or for visitations between children and their biological parents.

Lichte said that space could eventually be a location where caregivers could come to “shop” for their own welcome packs, picking out items tailored more to their situation, or could include a therapeutic playroom that provides some comfort for the children who visit.

“The goal is we want to grow, and to grow means we need a place,” Lee said.